The origin is almost certainly Norwegian, Danish doesn't use "våg" as far as I can recall, and the word has a different meaning in Swedish. If it came from Swedish, the spelling of the third part of the word would not be "nes".

I'd make a guess for north-western Norway (with a high probability for some island off the coast of Møre- og Romsdal*).

The meaning is, literally, "mire/moor (bog) + small bay + headland", and would probably translate better as "headland in the little mire-bay".

"Å" isn't difficult with Ikonboard at all, you just need the proper keyboard setup.

* Wimping out and checking with the Norwegian online cartographic service for roads, I find a place called "Myrvågneset" on Gurskøya (an island off the coast of Møre- og Romsdal); this may be entirely coincidental. There are, BTW, exactly four people in Norway with your spelling of that last name, and 51 with "å" instead of "aa".

Jan,

You win the prize (a free subscription to the LL forum .)

My father came from Ålesund on the West coast of Norway. A cousin of mine has traced the family genealogy back to a Jakob Olafsson who leased a section of the Myrvaagnes farm on Gurskøya, near Myrvågneset. At about the same time, some other guy, who may or may not have been related, leased another section of the same farm. My speculation is that after a few generations (Olaf Jakobsson, Jakob Olafsson, etc.), one of the Olafs or Jakobs moved to the big town of Ålesund, where some other Jakob or Olaf had the same father's name. So their friends started calling him by the name of the farm he came from. Of course, back then it was spelled with two a's; the "Å" came later.

Thus, some, or perhaps all, of the 55 (both "Å" and "aa") may be related to me. They are almost certainly descended from shareholders in the Myrvaagnes farm in the 19th century.

After my father came to America, married, and had kids, he thought of changing the family name legally to something simpler. The classiest sounding variant he considered was "Moorway", while the longest translation he came up with was "Quagmireinletpromontory", which is a more cumbersome version of your translation. I'm glad he never actually changed the name!

And if you ever get out to Gurskøya, take a look at the well-preserved Myrvaagnes farmhouse, which is preserved as a national historic house. I'll post a photo of it some day, after I've scanned it (taken with film, in 1996).

So, now back to Wienke ( rhymes with Blinky?).

Eric

P.S. Without the right keyboard, I could get your "å" and "ø" by cutting and pasting

I'll guess that Jonathan's ancestry is Austrian and more specifically from Vienna. "Wien" is German for Vienna and pronounced "Veen" and if I'm on the right track the "ke" would be pronounced with the "e" short, not "ee". So you end-up with Veenke unless he or his ancestors have Americanized it. Now back to Photoshop - took scads of grandchildren pictures over the weekend and need to process them pronto.

Sure. Actually, the name dates from before the A with the little circle over it (which is pretty hard to spell on Ikonboard anyway.)

Well, then:

The origin is almost certainly Norwegian, Danish doesn't use "våg" as far as I can recall, and the word has a different meaning in Swedish. If it came from Swedish, the spelling of the third part of the word would not be "nes".

I'd make a guess for north-western Norway (with a high probability for some island off the coast of Møre- og Romsdal*).

The meaning is, literally, "mire/moor (bog) + small bay + headland", and would probably translate better as "healand in the little mire-bay".

"Å" isn't difficult with Ikonboard at all, you just need the proper keyboard setup.

* Wimping out and checking with the Norwegian online cartographic service for roads, I find a place called "Myrvågneset" on Gurskøya (an island off the coast of Møre- og Romsdal); this may be entirely coincidental. There are, BTW, exactly four people in Norway with your spelling of that last name, and 51 with "å" instead of "aa".

My father came from Ålesund on the West coast of Norway. A cousin of mine has traced the family genealogy back to a Jakob Olafsson who leased a section of the Myrvaagnes farm on Gurskøya, near Myrvågneset. At about the same time, some other guy, who may or may not have been related, leased another section of the same farm. My speculation is that after a few generations (Olaf Jakobsson, Jakob Olafsson, etc.), one of the Olafs or Jakobs moved to the big town of Ålesund, where some other Jakob or Olaf had the same father's name. So their friends started calling him by the name of the farm he came from. Of course, back then it was spelled with two a's; the "Å" came later.

In Norway, it was quite common for people to take the name of the farm they bought or lived at. Some farm names are derived from the first name of the person founding the farm.

My last name, for instance, comes from one of two Ingvoldstad farms in Norway, and it was a name my great-great-grandfather (if I recall correctly) took when he owned that farm. There are three Ingvoldstad families in Norway, mine having the "least" to do with the name.

The farm name itself could mean something like "Ingvold's place", but that is as far as I can tell an unknown.

(Interesting background snipped.)

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And if you ever get out to Gurskøya, take a look at the well-preserved Myrvaagnes farmhouse, which is preserved as a national historic house. I'll post a photo of it some day, after I've scanned it (taken with film, in 1996).

I'll put it on my list of many, many places I'll consider visiting.

(I need so many conditionals because Norway is chock full of places I want to go!)

Quote

P.S. Without the right keyboard, I could get your "å" and "ø" by cutting and pasting

That's a bit cumbersome. In Windows, at least, there's a nice function for keyboard setup that lets you switch back and forth between different local keyboard layouts. I find this very useful, since a lot of keyboard shortcuts are English-optimized and completely impractical on a Norwegian layout. The best thing about it -- and this is where it beats X* -- is that it allows setting the keyboard layout per application.

* For those who wonder what "X" is: The X window system is the display system for most Unix-derived operating systems, but it can also run under Windows. MacOS X does not use X, but you can run X if you wish.

I said 2 (Veenka) which I assume you mean to be vee-enn-kah (but I had HS German). I also assume that Jonathon probably pronounces it differently, probably out of practicality. My last name is pronounced lah-she-ehh but long ago my family adopted pronuciation of "lasher" because you can't always be correcting people ;=)

Now we've solved the issues (oops: problems) of Bernard Unagi and Eric Quagmire... (that's me), and I'm eager to hear the answer to the original question. So, Tony, will you please remove the duct tape from Jonathan's mouth and let him tell us how to pronounce his name? I'm wasting too much time following this thread when I should be out taking photographs. As far as I can see, right now it's a perfect tie between "Jonathan Wee-en-ke" and "Jonathan Something else".